Published on Thursday, 8 February 2024 at 8:03:24 AM
With the Bureau of Meteorology’s severe heatwave warning for parts of WA from Wednesday 7 February to Saturday 10 February, Western Power would like to remind the community of the precautions it takes during heatwaves to ensure the safety of the community and crews.
While extensive summer preparedness and bushfire mitigation work has prepared the network for a hot summer, all electricity networks take extra precautions during heatwave events as forecasted by the Bureau of Meteorology.
The network is built to withstand high weather conditions and peak electricity demand, but it’s imperative that it be managed in line with fire weather conditions.
During these high temperature periods, our network settings are adjusted to reduce fire related risks, which may increase the frequency and duration of potential power outages.
Safety of the community and our crews is paramount and to minimise the risk of bushfire re-energisation only occurs when safe to do so.
Western Power asks people to be patient if they are experiencing an outage during the challenging conditions ahead. This includes the metro area as fire weather conditions can impact restoration times if poles and wires are located in heavily vegetated area like a park or bushland.
Where possible we have rescheduled non-essential planned work. There are some essential planned work that needs to be progressed for the safety of the community and crews. Customers whose power supply will be affected by planned outages will have been notified at least 72 hours in advance by email, SMS or mail. We do our best to contact customers to notify them ahead of time if their outage is cancelled.
Network resilience to cope with additional demand during peak times has been enhanced prior to summer through the upgrade of some distribution feeders and transformers, changes to load balancing and switching, and obtaining more emergency response generators.
During peak energy hours (5pm and 9pm), you can help by shifting your energy use and reducing power consumption, including setting your air conditioner to 24 degrees, and changing the time you use appliances with high energy consumption like induction cooktops, dishwashers, washing machines and pool pumps to non-peak times.
Western Power Media: media@westernpower.com.au or 1300 139 240 (24 hours)
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